In this day and age, every business needs to be on social media. If you’re not already, give it a try. It could benefit you and your business immensely and here are eight reasons why.
1. It Builds Relationships and Improves Communication
Social media allows you the opportunity to have a conversation with your customers. That’s something that traditional advertising does not offer. Having social media platforms where customers can feel as if they are talking directly to the brand is very powerful in strengthening customer relationships and building customer loyalty.
“Social media has changed the way businesses and customers interact with each other, and it’s important that social media is seen as an avenue for real-time communication and feedback.” – Sprout Social
2. It Helps You Get to Know Your Customers
As you’ve likely noticed, even just from scrolling through your feed on Instagram or Twitter, or any other social media platform, people are willing to share a lot about themselves through their social media profiles. For businesses and marketers, this is fantastic! If you’re using social media right, you can get to know what makes your customers tick. Take a look at what they “like,” what they “share,” and what they “dislike.”
“Understanding your audience: Ask yourself who you are targeting your content towards. Who do you want as customers? What do these people generally like? What kind of aesthetic are they attracted to?” – Like A Voss
3. Social Media Improves Your Customer Service
We live in a world where people are shifting away from picking up a phone and talking with someone for customer service related matters. Because of this, the way customer service should be offered is also changing.
Now, people are much more likely to reach out to businesses on social media regarding comments, questions, or complaints rather than physically talking to someone. This is done through tweets, stories, direct messages, comments, or even the odd post. Also, social media offers a much faster response rate (if you’re using it correctly and keeping on top of it, like any business on social media should). This has been proven to create a positive customer sentiment and increase the likelihood of a repeat customer.
4. It Creates Brand Loyalty
There have been a lot of studies done, such as this one, that state having an active social media presence creates more loyal customers. The biggest reason for this is because social media is a means of pulling your customers to you, rather than the typical means of pushing your products to them.
Social media offers customers content, entertainment, and education without truly requiring anything from them in return. This idea of ‘giving’ that social media creates is one of the major reasons why brand loyalty can be earned through active and influential social media accounts.
5. It Helps You Reach Untapped Customers
Social media offers businesses a chance to be seen by individuals and groups that have never heard of them before. There are no real boundaries with the organic reach that social media can provide. Someone all the way across the world might stumble across you while scrolling through Instagram. This can create a whole new supporter that you would have never had otherwise.
With ad targeting, you are also able to tap into markets and reach specific regions and customers that you couldn’t in the past. What else could do that without costing your business an arm and a leg?
6. It Drives the Right People to Your Website
As mentioned above, ad targeting allows you to reach your ‘ideal customers’ from anywhere. Having active social channels gives you the opportunity to drive existing customers and potential customers that are already a fan of your business directly to your website.
7. It Improves SEO
Not the most exciting reason that your business needs to be on social media, but definitely one of the most important ones is that it improves your SEO. Having social media accounts that are linked to your website and any other online sources your business has can lead to far more people going to those pages than before. This can increase your website’s ranking and create better SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
All of this, website rankings and SEO, is a vital step in making sure that your website comes first when customers are looking for products/services that you provide.
8. It Earns You Authority
Lastly, having social media accounts for your business makes your brand feel more legitimate and earns your authority in your field. Social media offers you a platform to show off your skills and strengths. It proves to customers that you know what you’re talking about and, on social media, where things can be hard to trust, this is vital.
Also, if a customer searches for your brand on social media and nothing comes up, it can make your brand seem unimportant and small or not legitimate at all. You certainly don’t want that.
Having social media profiles for your account can be super beneficial, but you need someone who knows how to actively run them and monitor them. If not, social media can become a nightmare. That’s where social media managers come in. They can take over your accounts and run them well so that you can focus on your business and what truly matters to you.
Need help running your social media? Contact us today to set up a FREE discovery session with our team – we’d love to help!
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This blog post was originally published in July 2018 and has been edited to improve accuracy and readability.
